Barney Frank

Barney Frank died in May. He finished one last book first.

THE HARD PATH TO UNITY publishes today from Yale University Press.

This account is managed by his closest collaborators to keep his words in circulation, with the support of his husband, Jim Ready.

Everything posted here in quotation marks is his own words.

“‘Cutting the fat out of government’ ranks with ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ and ‘the domino theory’ as metaphors that distort public policy. Of course there is fat in government, as in most human activities. But it is marbled throughout the meat, not a border that can be conveniently sliced off.”

"But in much of Europe—from France, where the extreme right under Le Pen disempowered the center-right coalition forged by Macron; to Germany, where the hyper-nationalist AfD outpolled the Christian Democrats in the east; to the United Kingdom, where the Tories have been driven rightward by the challenge of Nigel Farage and the Independents—populist ascendancy was a work in progress long before Elon Musk began resembling a malign character from a Sinclair Lewis novel."

"Rabbi Hillel got two right out of three. Yes, if you are not for yourself, no one else may be; yes, if you are only for yourself, you are not what you should be; but no, the time is not always now. Sometimes you have to wait until you have the votes."

"We can more accurately describe what happened and give ourselves a better analytic framework if we recognize these two reactions as having occurred in sequence. Income inequality came first; the culture wars followed and became more polarized as people's economic situation worsened.

The mainstream left has belatedly gotten the message on economic hardship. But persuading the dissident left to stop making their most controversial positions into litmus tests is both the hardest thing we have to do and the most important."